Jeremy Hunt expressed his "disappointment" on Wednesday that the two parties in the Levy dispute, racing and the bookmakers, "were not themselves able to come to terms" on a deal for the 50th scheme, and it would at least have been a touching way to mark the system's half-century had there been a little bit of understanding on both sides – touching but hardly appropriate since there has been so little give or take on either side during the previous 49 schemes, which have generally come and gone amid bitter rhetoric and recrimination.

In truth, it was not so much disappointing as depressing. Hunt's decision on the Levy was perfectly reasonable, so much so that neither side could find much to say against it yesterday. Assuming that it meets the estimated yield, it will bring in as much as racing could have hoped for in the teeth of a recession, given that the oft-quoted all-time high of £115m in 2007-08 was a freak born of spectacularly poor punting by a single Ladbrokes client.

On the other hand, it is not even close to the minimum of £130m that racing repeatedly claimed it "needed" and the fact that attendances have weathered the recession so well does rather suggest that British Racing Limited will still be open for business this time next year, even without that extra £55m or so that was supposedly essential.

So there will be no triumphant send-off for Nic Coward, the outgoing chief executive of the British Horseracing Authority. Ralph Topping, meanwhile, the head of William Hill and bookmaking's Mr Angry, had threatened to go to law if the settlement did not meet his approval but, even with a 7.5% hike in the slice of bookies' profits going to racing, he would need to be Mr Dozy, too, to go running to the courts now.

What really matters is the future and after so many years of politicians and interested parties on all sides saying that things will have to change it seems that things will, finally, have to change.

It must be nearly 20 years now since I spent a day at the newspaper library at Colindale, leafing through old copies of The Sporting Life to glean information for a feature on a different subject entirely. What it was I cannot recall but I do remember being struck by the constant mud-slinging that went on over the Levy in the early 1970s, too, and how the language and arguments in those days were identical to those that were being employed in the early 1990s.

Another 20 years on a fresh generation of bookies and administrators spent the months running up to October's Levy deadlock trotting out the same sacred sound-bites that had been passed down from their predecessors.

Now, at last, they will need to find some new ones and it seems odds-on that a leaf through the Racing Post in 2031 – assuming that it still has a print edition – will mention the Levy only in the "where are they now?" column. But the size and quality of the programme in the racing media of 20 years' hence could depend entirely on whether a shrewd determination of the 50th Levy is now followed by an even smarter answer to the riddle of what should replace it.

The idea of a "racing right", to be sold direct to bookmakers wishing to bet on the sport, is much in vogue at the moment, having received strong support in a recent Parliamentary debate. Who or what that "right" would belong to – which requires an answer to the question "What is racing?" – is another matter. The same question will need to be addressed if or when the government finally disposes of the Tote and tries to give half of the proceeds "to racing". Which bank account, precisely, will be banking that cheque?

This, to my mind, goes to the heart of racing's structural problems. It has grown from a pastime of royalty and landed gentry in the 17th and 18th centuries to become a billion-pound industry but in many ways it is still the same people in charge. For all but a handful of the last 250 years of organised racing in Britain the owners remained in charge via the Jockey Club, just as they had been from the start. Even now, though it is supposed to reduce the influence of sectional interests, the BHA has an owner as its chairman, as did the BHB before it.

Yet the business of racing is conducted on the track and any system that aims to bring the sport into the modern, commercial world needs to recognise this. Owners need to be seen as customers, not dictators, who are incentivised to send their horses to the races by, among other things, decent prize money. Punters are customers too, who pay for their interest in racing at the racecourse gate, via a bookmaker or both. And the bookies are simply the businesses in between, which – assuming they still want to bet on British racing – pay an agreed price for the right to do so.

In many respects the current process, whereby bookmakers pay for media rights and then again according to their profits, is perfectly workable but it needs to be centred around the commercial realities of racecourses rather than the supposed "needs" of owners. The element derived directly from betting is vital too, since it encourages racecourses to ensure that races are as competitive as possible – something else that, it can also be argued, is not necessarily in the owners' interests.

In the end the old order cannot be removed completely since most of the country's biggest tracks are still owned by the Jockey Club. But the balance can be shifted and it is the Jockey Club Racecourses part of the ancient operation that needs to assume the real significance going forward. Any proposed funding system that fails to appreciate this stands as little chance of long-term success as the old one.